Monthly Archives: October 2017

Award winning trio Said The Maiden are Jess Distill, Hannah Elizabeth and Kathy Pilkinton, three friends who discovered a mutual love of folk music when they reunited several years after spending their school years together in Hertfordshire. After tentatively performing a few songs at their local Redbourn Folk Club, the group soon gained a great deal of interest on the local and national folk circuit, securing major support and headline slots at folk clubs and festivals around the country.

Said the Maiden have also opened for many great artists including The Full English, The Fisherman’s Friends, Jim Moray, Megson, Martin Carthy, Clannad, Cara Dillon, False Lights and Fairport Convention. They were also honoured to join legendary fiddler the late Dave Swarbrick on a successful UK solo tour in the spring of 2014, and released their debut album ‘A Curious Tale’ in June of the same year. In 2016, the group went on to release their EP ‘Of Maids And Mariners’, which was met with critical acclaim across the folk community and in 2017 the trio won the Folking Awards ‘Rising Star’ prize.

“Rising doyennes of the folk scene … I can hear why Said The Maiden have already made themselves a healthy reputation, and I can also sense a strong measure of untapped potential.” (David Kidman, FATEA Magazine)

Tickets £11 (£8 club members) can be reserved by emailing us via the form on the contact page. Bring your own drinks. Teas and coffee available in the kitchen.

On Friday 27 October the song session theme will be Halloween. Tenuous connections to the theme are equally welcome.

The James Brothers come from the lands down under – Australia and New Zealand to be precise; lands in which the traditional songs and tunes of the British Isles have evolved their own unique characteristics. And it’s these songs and tunes, and several of their own making, that The James Brothers have united to play.

Sydney-born James Fagan is best known as one half of Nancy Kerr & James Fagan (musically and maritally), but also spotted playing guitar and bouzouki in The Cara Dillon Band, the live circus that is Bellowhead and with his parents and sister as The Fagans, where his folk career began.

Jamie McClennan is a Kiwi who found himself in a duo with Scotland’s BBC-award-winning Emily Smith (whom he also married) having chosen not to follow his first bandmates to Ireland, where they formed the much celebrated Gráda.Jamie has been sighted on fiddle, whistle and guitar next to the likes of Sharon Shannon, Beth Nielson Chapman, Jerry Douglas and his mum.

Tickets £11 (£8 club members) can be reserved by emailing via our contact page. Bring your own drinks – teas and coffee available in the kitchen.